IN less than a fortnight, David Kenworthy retires as Chief Constable of North Yorkshire. And today he sent the people of York and Selby a parting gift - a pledge to invest most of a £600,000 crime fighting fund on policing these areas.

This is a welcome, if overdue, recognition that North Yorkshire's urban centres have been under-funded.

Much of the county's population is concentrated in York and Selby; most of the crime takes place there. Yet for years they were not allocated a fair share of money and manpower.

It is not easy to divide scarce police resources across England's largest county. The problem was exacerbated by Whitehall's failure to fund the North Yorkshire force adequately for many years.

But extra Home Office funds have reduced that national disparity. So it is only right that the Chief Constable looked again at where he targets the cash.

York's leading policeman Chief Superintendent John Lacy has spoken trenchantly and repeatedly of his frustration at his lack of resources. In April, apologising after his officers failed to answer a call for help against rampaging vandals, he admitted the York police division was the poor relation compared to Harrogate and Scarborough.

The following month, he revealed a 17 per cent surge in recorded crime in York and Selby. He went on to contrast the police workload of today with that of 1975: crime had doubled but North Yorkshire has fewer than 100 more officers to deal with it.

Mr Lacy expanded on this theme in an Evening Press article last month. The force dealt with about 400 calls a week when he joined 34 years ago, he wrote. Now it is more like 10,000.

We expect more from our police force than ever before. So it is crucial that any new resources are deployed where they are most needed.

We echo Mr Lacy's hope that North Yorkshire's new Chief Constable, Della Cannings, will honour the commitment of her predecessor to spend more money where it is most needed.

Updated: 11:28 Wednesday, October 02, 2002